David PS
Member
As a general rule, I avoid ultra-processed foods (UPF). I thought the main issue was the lack of micronutrients. How little did I know.
Association of Ultraprocessed Food Consumption With Risk of Dementia
Background and Objectives There has been a growing body of evidence associating consumption of ultraprocessed foods (UPF) with adverse health outcomes including depression, cardiovascular disease, and all-cause mortality. However, whether UPF are associated with dementia is unknown. The authors...
n.neurology.org
Abstract
Background There has been a growing body of evidence associating consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPF) with adverse health outcomes including depression, cardiovascular disease, all-cause mortality. However, whether UPF are associated with dementia is unknown. The authors investigated the associations between UPF and dementia incidence in UK biobank.
Methods We included 72,083 participants (55 years or older) who were free from dementia at baseline and provided at least two times 24-h dietary assessments from the UK Biobank study. Follow-up occurred through March 2021. UPF were defined according to the NOVA classification. Incident all-cause dementia comprising Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia was ascertained through electronic linkages to hospital and mortality records. Cox proportional hazards were used to estimate the association between the proportion (%) of UPF in the diet and the subsequent risk of dementia. In addition, substitution analysis was used to estimate the risk of dementia when substituting UPF with an equivalent proportion of unprocessed or minimally processed foods.
Results During a total of 717,333 person-years of follow-up (median 10.0 years), 518 participants developed dementia, of which 287 developed Alzheimer’s disease and 119 developed vascular dementia. In the fully adjusted model, consumption of UPF was associated with higher risk of dementia (hazard ratio (HR) for 10% increase in UPF: 1.25; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.14, 1.37), Alzheimer’s disease (HR: 1.14; 95% CI: 1.00, 1.30) and vascular dementia (HR: 1.28; 95% CI: 1.06, 1.55), respectively. In addition, replacing 10% of UPF weight in diet with an equivalent proportion of unprocessed or minimally processed foods was estimated to be associated with a 19% lower risk of dementia (HR: 0.81; 95% CI: 0.74, 0.89).
Conclusions In this prospective cohort study, higher consumption of UPF was associated with higher risk of dementia, while substituting unprocessed or minimally processed foods for UPF was associated lower risk of dementia.
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